


I'm gonna keep you in love with me

by sandyk



Series: Cannot command your love [2]
Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: F/M, more rewrite of season three
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 20:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16456859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk
Summary: Seriously, Dina and Garrett can't break up because they are not dating. And Jonah and Amy will totally not date. Probably.





	I'm gonna keep you in love with me

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, not profit garnered. Thanks so so much to A!! Title from the the national's dark side of the gym. Chapter one for the trope bingo spot rites of passage.

Amy finally got Dina to admit she wasn't sleeping and she was constantly tense, so after Dina's full length confession, Amy chose to call in sick. She needed her sleep. She needed her focus to avoid Jonah in such a way that it didn't seem like she was avoiding him. She needed to not have sex with Jonah again. 

Not that that was likely to happen again. Jonah was always very respectful. She saw him eye her butt once. He could have just been looking at the endcap, though. But that was a level of responsibility Jonah didn't muster for Cloud 9. 

Amy laid in bed and stared at the ceiling. She should go out on a date. She should do something. Maybe she should download one of those apps. She'd sort of been waiting for Mateo or Garrett to help her. Harass her. But she could do this on her own. She searched the app store and tried to find one that didn't seem inherently awful. They were all awful. 

She sighed. She could do this. She wasn't pathetic. She wasn't in her forties, despite what Dina thought. She was strong. Super strong. 

She needed a new profile pic for all this dating she was going to do. Attracting men and then dating them. Dating the fuck out of them. Maybe only fucking some of them. 

She flipped through the pictures on her phone. She didn't take enough selfies. She didn't feel up to taking more pictures. Maybe she should get one of those lights. She would bet Cheyenne had one of those lights. Not too bright, there was a lot of working at Cloud 9 and divorcing on her skin. They should make a sheet mask for that. 

The next day when she did go into work, she took a few pictures while working the makeup counter. She took so many pictures. Probably way too many pictures but she needed a lot. She finally winnowed it down to two and just closed her eyes and uploaded one. Then she had to face the information and questions. She saw Mateo looking at her and rolling his eyes and that gave her the strength to go on. 

She was editing her answers when she looked up and saw Jonah leaning over her. "Whatcha doing?"

"Working on this," she said. She held up the screen to him very quickly and then went back to fixing her answers. 

"So you're, uh, you're getting out there?" Jonah had a very forced smile. She felt bad that maybe she was breaking his heart, but she'd been clear. She had a plan that made sense. She couldn't just throw herself at the first person she was attracted to, the one she'd been mildly attracted to when she was married. 

"I'm trying," she said. "Aren't you on one of these? More than one of these?"

"Dating apps," Jonah said, like he was explaining what gluten free really meant. "Yes, I am on a few. I was on a few. I purged it down to one. Probably none soon. I don't want to date."

"Ever?"

"No," Jonah said. He was scrupulously looking everywhere but at Amy. She felt bad, again. "Maybe I'm going to be single, for a while. Single and not looking. Just let life happen to me. Flow through me, around me."

"Are you the river there or the mountain or what?"

"I'm everything," Jonah said. "I know it doesn't make sense. Just, you know. Finding my place."

"Sorry for freaking you out," Amy said. 

 

"Oh, no, not you, it's not about you," Jonah said. "Do you want me to edit that? I feel like you're editing it a lot."

She said okay and he did a little editing. She pressed upload or submit and she was done. She was going to get matches. 

She didn't get a lot of matches. She reached out to some of them. They reached out to her. She set up some dates. She even went on them. Two guys were almost kinda fun. She even made out with both of them. She wasn't quite ready for casual sex. She had to accept she just wasn't a casual sex person. Probably.

"You're not," Dina said. She looked at the photos of the two guys. "I would have slept with both of these guys. Specifically the second one. Rrawr."

Amy was still taken back that she and Dina were good friends, and they were good friends. They were, Dina was the only one Amy really vented to. And Dina hadn't told anyone that Amy had sex with Jonah. That was a sign of a good friend. Amy said, "I just didn't want to. Maybe I will with the next guy. I have two more dates coming up."

"Maybe I should break up with Garrett," Dina said.

"Wouldn't that imply you're dating Garrett?" Amy grinned. 

"I'm not," Dina said. "We just have sex. That's all," Dina said, as she marched away. 

 

Jonah was really not having sex with anyone. Sometimes he didn't even leave his apartment except to go to work for days at a time. He was pretty sure Gideon would look at him with a very concerned face, the kind that made men and women swoon because, duh, tall beautiful Gideon, but Jonah was okay with that. Gideon was far away. He did still experience some real envy that Gideon was so tall and handsome. Jonah would have liked to be really tall. 

Jonah wasn't doing nothing. He watched a ton of documentaries on Amazon and Netflix. Also Hulu. He listened to a bunch of podcasts. He briefly thought about signing up for Hello Fresh. He didn't, but he thought about it. 

He'd lost all his stuff, things he really cared about. He was a little sentimental. He missed his old laptop, it still had stickers on it from when he lived in Chile. A tiny voice in his head that sounded like Amy said he hadn't really lived in Chile, he'd been there for two weeks and he'd stayed with a friend of the family who had a huge condo. But Jonah had been out on the streets, he'd bought that sticker. 

Jonah felt he really needed to sit with the experience. And adapt to this new experience, working for Cloud 9, still working for Cloud 9. Even though he'd graduated with an excellent GPA from Vassar. But it was fine. There was a lot more to life than getting a PhD or writing for the Atlantic or getting an MBA and working for his dad at Merrill Lynch. 

He got a few plants. He took very good care of them. Jonah took a lot of instagram pictures of them, got a few likes. 

Jonah called it cocooning. Healing. He still went out, of course, very occasionally. Trivia night with Garrett sometimes, out for beers a few times with some of the other Cloud 9 gang. He had other friends, too. He made friends really easily. 

Amy went on a lot of dates. He saw her, going out on her dates. He wondered if she had a number in mind, how many she had to date and maybe then she would date him. He tried not to hope too hard. He talked to the plants about it. 

He felt like he was passing an important rubicon. It was something he hadn't done, be really by himself. 

 

Dina liked both of her therapists. They were nice enough people. They seemed to have some okay advice for getting her brain under control. She just needed to know the right exercises. 

"I just wish someone had told me in advance," Dina said. She was getting dressed in the shelter while Garrett guzzled some gatorade. Dina knew she wore him out. He could do with more cardio conditioning. More than their sexual workouts. 

"You think you would have avoided it?"

"Of course," Dina said. "This whole thing just snuck under my defenses like lizard worming its way into a house made with inferior building materials."

"Can a lizard worm its way anywhere? A lizard crawls or maybe waddles, but it doesn't slither or worm," Garrett said.

"It was clearly a metaphor," Dina said. "Your obsession with worms is repulsive."

"You're obsessed with birds and, and a bunch of other things! I can't remember them all right now because that was really good sex, but I feel like you do not get to throw around words about someone's obsession being anything," Garrett said. He wrinkled his nose and actually kind of looked cute. He was cute, though Dina had no intention of telling him that. It would go straight to his head. 

"Whatever," Dina said. 

The next day, she was sitting at the break table with Amy and her loser not boyfriend. Dina said, "Maybe I should break up with Garrett. I could do that."

"Why would you, though?" Amy looked puzzled and very old. She needed a lot of moisturizer. More plants in her diet. 

"So you admit it would be breaking up," Jonah said. 

"I'm not saying anything of the sort," Dina said. Maybe she could intimidate them into forgetting her freudian slip. Not a slip. It wasn't a slip. She willed herself to forget. 

"You said you would be breaking up," Amy said, smirking unattractively. Dina should have had better taste in best friends. "So you are currently dating."

"No, we are not, we definitely are not," Dina said. 

"Yes, you are," Jonah said. Like he was a therapist. She really disliked his irritating, attractive face. 

"Maybe I am," Dina said. "I guess I have to say that. It's horrifying."

"Garrett's a nice guy, well, no, Garrett's a guy. Sometimes he's nice," Jonah said. "Worth holding on to."

"That's not true," Dina said. "Just because I am doesn't mean he's worth it."

"Oh, Dina, you're learning and growing," Amy said. "Just like me and Jonah."

"I hate every part of this conversation," Dina said.


End file.
